And Not to Yield
by MagnoliaTree
Summary: AU- 'apocalypse-esque' When the Elemental countries descend into chaos and normal use of chakra becomes impossible, how can anybody live without searching for those whom they once held precious? The remnants of Konoha converge and diverge paths as they survive in a new world. Shikamaru-centric. Mentioned pairings, character death.


**And Not to Yield**

**Chapter 1**

**_'Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will_**

**_To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'_**

**_-Ulysses_****- Alfred, Lord Tennyson**

_Running. All he could remember was running, the burn of the dry air on his throat and the gasp his rasping breath. His legs pounded the earth, his eyes desperately searching for something, anything- a place to hide. He'd been running for so long, he'd almost forgotten what he was escaping from. Almost. His brain was turning at a mile a minute. He'd always been smart, after all. Don't expect him to even slightly understand what was going, though. Ask somebody else… he doesn't know. He didn't think anyone did, really. It had come so fast, come in the overnight, almost, though that was an awful expression to use. The weak perished. The strong barely survived. The lucky got away, and the cruel lived._

Such was the way of the world, or what was left of it, anyhow. He wasn't important enough to be pursued, as such. But he couldn't stop. He had nothing left to fight with and _something_ was bound to get him.

The acid in his muscles was burning, burning like nothing else. The edges of his vision began to fade away, everything turning grey with exhaustion. He doubted he'd ever see in colour again- not that there was any colour left in this life. Not real colour. Nobody cared about that sort of thing anymore- nobody cares, full stop. The pain was eating away at his sanity now. He didn't care. He sank to his knees. What was going on with him? No…

He was going to die here, in this place that he couldn't even see. He'd wanted to die properly, going down in some sort of ironic but vaguely memorable fashion (didn't everyone?), but no. He supposed it was inevitable that he would perish whilst running away.

_Shit- Shika? _His vision was almost entirely black now. He could feel something cold at his throat- a knife? No, it was soothing, healing… A hand? Delicate, but calloused. Damn, he was hallucinating. He'd have liked to have ended his life in dignity, at least. The voices were fading away now, oscillating in volume, so that he could only hear snippets of the conversation.

_Not keeping him- _

_-can't just leave him-_

_-well-_

_- good deed for the week- _

_-but, _Shika!-

_- Just slow us down…_

_- No!_

When he awoke, he thought he was dead. No, he prayed he was dead because if he'd been captured, captured by one of the gangs, the alliances! He only knew one reason why anybody _weak_ stayed alive.

He prayed he was dead.

Can you feel pain if you're dead? Fuck, no. Guess not then- he had to run, run although there's nothing left in him to run anymore- Not like he hadn't done it before. Can't stop to think. (He used to love making plans. He used to love a lot of things.) He kept his eyes shut, no need to let _them_ know he was awake- whoever _they_ were.

He surged. Every muscle in his body screamed, protesting. And as quickly as the thought of escape came, it died. Not because his body couldn't support him- he'd found his body could do a lot of things he'd never have known it could, never have wished to find out- but because he had been slammed back down, by the force of gravity and the weight of somebody's forearm on his neck. He was restrained- could this situation get any worse?

He didn't know how he hadn't realised it before, but it's not only the weight on his front that's holding him down. There was something around his wrists and ankles as well- not binding him, exactly, but holding him to the ground. He brought a finger up to examine it- against the scratch of his bitten nails and the roughened, scarred pads of his fingertips, the manacle felt like it was only paper- paper and ink. Some sort of seal, perhaps?

If they're ninja, he's fucked. Probably literally.

The inside of the manacle felt sort of- slippery, but not congealed like the blood or sweat he might've expected. It was cool against his skin… water, or the paint one would, in another life, dip a calligraphy brush into. He still hadn't opened his eyes.

"You're awake." The voice was bland, uninterested. It was the sort of voice one would expect some sort of-of hidden steel within, below the surface. But this one truly seemed to have no emotion behind it. It was a frightening thought. "There's no use pretending. Open your eyes." He lay stubbornly still. There was no way he was going to give them anything willingly. Even if he couldn't run, he could still resist. "Look at me!"

The voice, though still emotionless, had sharpened. He could feel the arm pressing down against his throat. Shit. Although it didn't seem possible (and he'd been swearing a lot lately, come to think of it.), the growing pressure on his jugular seemed to be forcing his eyelids open. He could see. His vision was blurry, unfocussed. The whole area was still only coloured in a dull grey.

The man he could now see, in dull negative, like an antique photograph, had only one knee on his chest. They were almost nose to nose, his captor leaning far over him in order to gain the maximum leverage possible. The appearance fit the voice perfectly. Black, unremarkable hair, a fringe. A fake smile was plastered across his face, his pale and waxy skin almost shone. He was dangerous.

"I knew you were awake," his captor said. "If it were up to me, you wouldn't be. Not by a long shot."

He refused to say anything. What can you say to that? At least this man doesn't want anything from him. He may still be allowed to die. One thought, however, penetrated his mind. The distant stirrings of a memory. The man was speaking again. "They wanted to keep you. Well, He wanted to keep you. _She_ just couldn't leave you behind." The emotionless man's polite smile widened. "I am Sai. If you harm them, I will kill you."

_Sai… _He had heard that name before. Perhaps, in another life.

"Sai! You bastard, what are you doing? Get off him!"

"He's awake?"

Two voices, one strident, one delicate, entered the fray. The man- Sai- leapt off him as though he were a bed of hot coals.

"He just woke up."

Suddenly there was a cold hand on his forehead. The same one as before. "I think he has a temperature." Long strands of hair brushed along his neck. Pink hair. A yellow and orange blob bounced across his peripheral vision.

Colour seeped -flooded- back into his existence.

No. He had to still be hallucinating. (Again? Still?) The bland man was still standing there, smug. He was a more believable vision than this. _These_ people couldn't truly be here- even if he was dead; he surely hadn't done enough good in his life to get into heaven. The woman spoke.

"If I know you, your thoughts are racing a mile a minute. Calm down."

Shut up! He wanted to scream. You aren't real. He managed to produce a sound, a rasp from his disused, abused throat. "Don't speak. You need to drink. You're horribly dehydrated as well as starved… I know food is hard to come by, but couldn't you have stopped for water, at least?" Her voice, her exasperated sigh, was so gut wrenchingly familiar. He couldn't bear this taunting, this tantalising image of peace and sanctuary. He almost choked on the watery broth that was tipped down his throat as he opened his mouth to try again.

It was warm and wholesome, the type of food one only dreamed, or hallucinated about, nowadays. _But you can't choke on a dream_, his traitor mind whispered. The thought that he might be alive, safe, well, with _them_- it was a shrine of sanctuary, an aedicula which he had to restrain himself from worshipping at. Before he had even finished the mouthful, the pink-haired angel was already beside the- Sai, questioning him and gesturing frantically.

"Name." he croaked. All heads turned to him in unnatural synchronicity.

"Sorry?"

"If you truly are real," he begged "tell me, what is my name?" He'd forgotten, so long ago. It had been extra weight, he supposed, before it had been discarded as he ran. But it had been kind of nice to have an identity. He wondered if they could help him retrieve it. He'd pray at their tabernacle forever.

The yellow-orange one's voice dropped, below what he would have thought was capable from such a blinding, forceful nature. "What, don't you remember?" he almost whispered, "You're Shikamaru. Nara Shikamaru, from the Village Hidden in the Leaves."

"Yesss…Nara Shikamaru. Chuunin of Konohagakure, registration number 00714. Thank you." He remembered thinking how scratchy his voice was, before he passed out.

Smoke. The smell burned his nostrils, and choked his breath. He broke out into coughs.

"The lazy ass's awake again? 'Bout time! What's up, Shikamaru? Woulda thought you were used to second-hand smoke!" An obnoxious voice crowed. He'd forgotten just how loud these people were. _These people. _He stared once again at them in wonder, his thoughts turning over distant memories, unbidden. Naruto. Sakura. Even their names were some sort of sanctuary.

"Shut up, Naruto. Be a little more sensitive, OK? Tact?"

"I thought tact was an animal..."

Shikamaru snorted- he'd missed this- but the laugh died in his throat. "A fire? Are you guys insane? A fire's practically a_sking _for somebody to come and find us!"

"That'll be the day." Naruto muttered. Sakura elbowed him.

"I'm sorry, Shikamaru." She explained. "What Naruto _means _is that we are more than capable of handling any opposition currently in the area."

"Huh, and here I thought your abilities depended on chakra, Sakura." Shikamaru sighed. When he had woken up that one morning, in terror, and realised what had been stolen, he had almost died right there on the spot. His shadow chakra was part of his genetics. Losing it had been like losing an arm or leg. Probably both at once. Even the memory of that pain was painful. Konoha in flames, his comrades screaming- he remembered that moment above all of those. The only part of that morning which equalled that memory in intensity was the crushing guilt he had felt once he realised that he considered the loss of his chakra more important than his village. He'd always been selfish.

"For your information, Naruto can still utilise Sage Mode. Natural chakra, remember. And Sai practises modified fuuinjutsu." She snorted. "Some genius."

Shikamaru's eyes sharpened, noticing the omission immediately. The medic caught his assessing gaze with her own eyes, but as quickly as she had initiated the eye contact she broke it, jerking her head.

Sakura coughed bitterly. "I'm not a medic-nin anymore. But still a damn fine doctor, and lucky for you that I am!" She cried defensively. Shikamaru didn't mind. He had deserved that- It _was_ an insensitive comment. "I have no idea how you managed to mess up your body this much! You weren't even running on fumes when we found you- more like the fumes of fumes. To function, it looks like your muscles were eating themselves!" It was a sobering thought.

The congregation fell back into an awkward silence. The only one of them still smiling was Sai. Naruto coughed uncomfortably. "Um, moving on…" he spoke into the quiet.

Shikamaru made a valiant effort to change the subject. "Ah, so. Troublesome." He stammered. "What are you guys doing -er- in these parts, anyway?"

"Searching, -ttebayo!" Shikamaru sighed. Leave it to Naruto to give such an enthusiastic, yet utterly useless answer. Once again, he looked to Sakura for illumination. Her face had taken on a determined set in the flickering firelight.

"He's right." She said "We are searching for something. Or rather, _someone_."

"Oh."

"We're looking for the Traitor." The previously silent Sai pitched in.

Naruto nodded silently. "I could have worked that out, thank you, Sai." responded Shikamaru grimly. "But last I checked, Sasuke was even better at running away I am. What makes you think he'll want to be found by you, even now? _Especially _now?"

"Just because there's more stuff going on, doesn't mean we're gonna give up on him, Shika!" cried Naruto. Sakura pursed her lips at the noise, but agreed.

"Now, it's even more important that we find him." She almost whispered, staring off into the darkness outside the ring of light caused by the fire. "You, of all people, should understand how important it is to bring him back, Shikamaru."

Bring him back to _what_? Shikamaru wanted to ask. But he didn't- he guessed he did understand, sort of. He understood enough about revenge, anyway. And he knew that if he had gone down that path, as he supposed he, anybody, could easily have done, Choji and Ino would have fought like anything to return him. That sort of thing, the sort of bond you had between team mates, was special. That was love.

"All of this is so far in the past, now." He muttered. "I feel weird bringing it up. What about _you_?" he nodded his head at Sai. "You don't act like you feel any sort of obligation to Sasuke."

When he looked back at Naruto, the young man's eyes were blazing in the orange light. They seemed almost red. "Sai's with us. Always." He stated it as a simple fact of life, which many things were, Shikamaru supposed, for Naruto. (It wasn't that Naruto was illogical, quite the opposite. He simply thought in straight lines while everybody else thought in mazes. That was Shika's theory, anyway.) It was a fact which Sai easily corroborated. His pale smile widened the slightest bit.

"It's true. I'm for them."

Shikamaru couldn't say anything to that. "Fine." They descended back into silence. They'd reached an accord- Shikamaru could understand their goal, but that didn't mean he had to believe their chances were particularly high.

Sai's face flickered on the other side of the fire. _I'm watching you_. Shikamaru remembered now about Sai, and ROOT. If there was one quality Sai understood, he expected it was loyalty. And he knew that Sai would kill him if he even breathed wrong near Naruto and Sakura. He supposed that wasn't exactly a bad thing, but that meant he'd have to keep a sharp eye on the emotionless ninja until he left.

"What about you?" Shikamaru's thoughts were rudely interrupted. "How did a genius like you end up in our end of the woods? Literally." The expression was a little bit out of character for Sai, and Shikamaru started in shock.

"Sai! You're as bad as Naruto! Can't you show some subtlety?" yelled Sakura. She looked over at Shikamaru in a silent apology.

"Hey! I can be subtle… But, Shika, I kinda wanna know too… sorry?"

Shikamaru's mouth suddenly felt dry, despite the fact that Sakura had been constantly refilling his roughly carved mug, muttering the phrase _severe dehydration _whenever he tried to protest. The ex-shadow ninja coughed into his hand. What he wouldn't give for a cigarette right now!

"Saa…" he croaked. "It's complicated."

"It's OK," Sakura said remorsefully. "You don't need to tell us anything. You're under no obligation whatsoever."

Shikamaru shook his head. They had saved his life, after all.

"It's alright. I'll tell you." He murmured. "Troublesome…"

**oOo**

"I was with Ino and Kiba at first. We just found each other, I guess, and we ran together. We just had a few kunai and shuriken, and some trail rations, and since mine and Ino's abilities had gone, we were forced to rely on taijutsu, and on Kiba. Kiba was pretty darn good with his fists, way better than us capture and interrogation guys. And of course, he still had Akamaru. That was always going to be an advantage.

"It was really hard for us though, to have to rely on Kiba. We even relied on him and Akamaru for food, most of the time. He would've done just fine alone- probably much better. As it was, we were always half starving, and jumping at our own shadows as well. He didn't mind though, not at all. He was always talking about how great it was to finally be useful for something other than …'sniffing stuff and finding out where it's been', were his own words I think. I don't think he'd ever liked tracking that much, even though it was his clan specialty. It was weird… Ino and I were so upset about the collapse of our clan and the loss of our clan specialties. But Kiba was almost happy. He never wanted his enhanced senses that much anyway. A lot of the time, he said, they'd actually been a liability in a fight." Shikamaru decided to ignore Naruto's fervent agreement –_Damn right they were a liability, remember the Chuunin exams?- _There wasn't much he could say about _that _debacle.

"He was so optimistic- and strong as well. That sort of confidence…. well , I think it made Ino start to notice him in a different way than she ever had in Konoha. Soon she was telling me that she was in love, and so was he. They became closer, much closer… which was kind of awkward for me."

Shikamaru glanced at the faces of his audience. They were listening hungrily, sucking in any details about their long gone classmates. He remembered that Ino and Sakura had been close, in a weird way… nemeses-cum-best friends. At least, Naruto and Sakura were engrossed. Sai looked quizzical. "So you left… because it was awkward?"

"No! Do I look suicidal to you? Anyway, where was I?"

Sakura elbowed Sai. "Don't interrupt, Sai. Questions afterwards."

"Loosen up, Sakura!" grumbled Naruto. "It's not a public lecture…"

Seeing that this had the potential to turn into one of those monumental Team 7 rows which usually ended up in large proportions of the surrounding area being destroyed, Shikamaru cleared his throat. "May I continue?" he asked pointedly. They shut up.

"It wasn't any fight which got Kiba, in the end. We were near an old destroyed village in what used to be Water Country. It was called _Desolation, _or something ridiculous like that. Began with an S. Anyway, we hadn't found any animal or crop for days, and were getting kind of desperate. Eventually, we came to an area which was completely iced over. Just a tiny hut by a lake, but inside the hut… We shouldn't have gone in, but we thought there might be some food which had been preserved by the cold.

"Shit, it was awful. There must have been twenty or thirty corpses in there, most of them male, all armed. They all looked as if they'd been impaled on these spikes of ice –but the one woman, who'd been stabbed several times. A Hyoton user had just gone beserk in there. From the dates of the bloodline purges, the corpses must have been at least forty years old, but they were preserved in the ice as if it had happened yesterday. We got the hell out of there… but just as we were leaving, Kiba, and Akamaru on his shoulder, stepped on a bad bit of ice. It caved in right under his feet, and he sank like a log." Shikamaru heard a gasp from one of the listeners. Sakura had a hand covering her mouth, and Naruto's eyes were squeezed shut.

He wasn't going to stop now, though. They had asked, after all. "He should have been able to swim out easily, he was strong enough, even on starvation rations. But there were strong currents under the surface, and he was pulled away from the opening. The water must have been freezing, and it didn't look like he was fighting it at all. We tried to break the ice, but it was so thick…

"Eventually, we managed to make a hole big enough to pull him out, and Ino started trying to resuscitate him… and she succeeded. He opened his eyes for just long enough to realise that we hadn't managed to save Akamaru as well, before he just gave up. For a fighter like Kiba, he went to meet his maker with very little struggle. The struggle was all on Ino's and my part, but we couldn't keep him alive when he didn't want to be... Kiba was gone, just because of the bad luck of a weak patch of ice. Ino... well, neither of us had ever been that... shocked. When Asuma-sensei died, it just brought us closer, but, with Kiba… It broke something between us." He looked around. Sakura's face had gone so pale, she looked like somebody had dusted it with rice powder- as if she were attending a festival or ceremony, not this grim gathering of survivors. Naruto, on the contrary, just looked like he was going to be sick. Sai was as pale as Sakura, but Shikamaru thought that might just be his natural skin tone. He grimaced.

"And then there were just the two of us. Ino and I travelled together after that, but we couldn't relax. We had only the two kunai left by that point- both of us took one, and never put it down. We couldn't even relax with each other around. Kiba's death had driven some kind of wedge between us. I was apologising to her again and again, I don't know what for. We were all that the other had, we'd known each other for as long as we could remember, but… How could we trust each other?

"A few days later, Ino disappeared in the night. She took both my weapon and hers, knocked me out while I was on watch duty. I knew she'd do it, of course. I'd been waiting for a week for her to eventually leave. Sometimes, when she looked at me, I could see the revulsion in her eyes. She just couldn't bear to be around me any longer. I think she blamed me for Kiba's death… logically, there was nothing I could have done- But I guess when you're in love, you don't think with your head. You think with your heart."

Sai bowed his head. "So that's how. After being betrayed by your team mate, you had no way left to defend yourself. You ran, and didn't stop."

"What should I have done? Gone after her? I couldn't have- staying with me was killing her. It wasn't her betrayal, no matter how it sounds- but it wasn't mine either!" Shikamaru snapped. Why was it that everything Sai said managed to fray his nerves?

"There's no need to get defensive…"

"I'm sorry, Shikamaru." said Sakura, playing the peacemaker again. There was a catch in her voice… And somehow he guessed that she wasn't just apologising for Sai's lack of diplomatic skills. "Sai didn't mean to be callous. And, after all, you did stop. You stopped and let us help you."

Sai smiled, predatorily. "That's right. After all, _you _aren't the type of person who won't stop running away from his friends, who are always trying to help him. _That_ would be somebody else."

Well, that wasn't pointed at all. It looked like Sai had been taking lessons from Team 7 in tactless bickering, (if not in smiling, or tanning.) And it also appeared that he liked Sasuke even less than Shikamaru did. Sai didn't have an opinion on many things, so Shikamaru guessed that when he did, he _would_ be quite blunt about it.

Why, if he disapproved so much, was he helping Sakura and Naruto find the Uchiha? Perhaps his loyalty really was absolute. He could admire that in a person.

He gave a quiet snort. "Well, I wouldn't exactly say I _let_ you help me. I just passed out- you did the rest."

"So true!" Naruto crowed. "He's got you there, Sakura, Sai!"

**oOo**

* * *

**Disclaimer: Don't own!**

**A quick explanation-**

**For anybody who is interested, This is very loosely based on The Aeneid and The Odyessy. So they have suffered a destruction of their home (Aeneid) and are trying to return to their 'family', or just survive (Odyessy-ish). Some of them are trying to rebuild their lives(Aeneid) by founding another settlement.**

**So far, Sakura and Naruto symbolise Aeneas, and Shikamaru (later Neji) is Odysseus. The main difference being that they are both on the same side...**

**The idea is also that the 'gods' (in this story, no religion is made clear though) don't want them to survive and achieve their goals, so anything that can go wrong, will.**

**There will be a 'Dido' as well...**

**This explanation probably only makes sense to me. Love you all, MagnoliaTree xxx**


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